Kennedy on TV: 50 years later, all networks look back

The 50th anniversary of the killing of John F. Kennedy has spurred a host of TV specials: some historical, some conspiratorial. Here, as senator, he reads a newspaper account of his presidential primary election victory over Sen. Hubert Humphrey on May 11, 1960.

Watching too many 50th anniversary TV “specials” in recent weeks — with a mix of renewed pain, nostalgia, then anger and annoyance at the cashing in — the black-and-white images of memory have been at war with the color re-enactments.

The view from inside the Texas School Book Depository, a thoroughly modern P.O.V. re-enactment, feels almost obscene in “Killing Kennedy,” a dramatization Nov. 10 on the National Geographic Channel. Rob Lowe’s resemblance to JFK is uncanny, but the attempts to mimic Jackie are just sad.

The anniversary unearths interviews with everyone from “the man in the white Stetson,” (the detective handcuffed to Lee Harvey Oswald when he was shot by Jack Ruby) on the Military Channel’s “Capturing Oswald” airing Nov. 12, to a ghoulish look at “JFK: The Final Hours” on the National Geographic Channel, narrated by Bill Paxton, who was 8 years old when he stood in the crowd to greet Kennedy in Fort Worth that day. “What we didn’t know was that President Kennedy was going to die in just a few hours.”

Historic perspective is at times eclipsed by talk of the physical beauty of the First Couple.

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Some are micro accounts. Discovery uses digitally remastered audio from the Dallas Police Force in “JFK: The Lost Tapes” on Nov. 21, and Walter Cronkite is the co-star of “JFK: One PM Central Standard Time,” a minute-by-minute account airing Nov. 13 on PBS’s “Secrets of the Dead.” On Nov. 22 MSNBC mounts “JFK: The Day That Changed America,” and “The Kennedy Brothers,” both hosted by Chris Matthews.

Others are macro. CNN puts the era into context on Nov. 14 with “The Sixties: The Assassination of JFK.” CBS makes the wear of 50 years visible: “As It Happened: John F. Kennedy, 50 Years,” on Nov. 16, is hosted by Bob Schieffer, who was in Dallas that day. A glaring omission: Dan Rather wasn’t invited to be on CBS recalling the day he reported from Dallas for his old network; instead he gave an interview to Tom Brokaw for an NBC special on Nov. 22.

TV’s most radical JFK offering comes from Reelz Channel, which in “JFK: The Smoking Gun,” (airing Nov. 10 and through the month) concludes that a second gunman, Secret Service agent George Hickey, accidentally shot Kennedy from the car behind the president’s. The dramatizations are awful, but conspiracy theorists will applaud the work of Aussie detective Colin McLaren in this documentary, which builds on Bonar Menninger’s book “Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK.”

There’s a certain amount of amateur psychology in the otherwise excellent PBS “American Experience” installment titled “JFK” — which leaves us feeling less kindly toward JFK the politician, beyond the charisma. Pointedly, Kennedy is shown to be frighteningly inexperienced, slow on civil rights, an unapologetic womanizer, and a product of his father’s ambition, determined to hide his medical conditions. Ultimately that new four-hour film, airing Nov. 11-12, is the best history lesson of the lot. It takes the long view, resists the urge to replay the Dallas footage, and even uses NBC reporter Edwin Newman’s voice delivering the news, rather than Cronkite’s.